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For its 4th campus, Flatirons church eyes I-25 between Lafayette, Longmont

Days after the church announces plans to launch school, pastor reveals new development

By Anthony Hahn

Staff Writer

Posted:
05/16/2016 08:55:01 PM MDT

Dan Levasseur and Churchy Cannon, front right, attend the 5 p.m. service at Flatirons Community Church in Lafayette on April 11, 2015. (Paul Aiken / Staff Photographer)

Flatirons Community Church

Current locations:

Lafayette campus: 355 W. South Boulder Road

West campus: 34887 Genesee Trail Road, Golden

Downtown campus: Paramount Theater, 1621 Glenarm Place, Denver

With its modern 4,000-seat auditorium, state-of-the-art performance amenities, high-energy atmosphere and a tattooed, "straight-talking" pastor on stage, Flatirons Community Church's appeal has attracted staggering numbers — an average weekly attendance of roughly 17,500 — growth that now allows the church to franchise its message throughout as it looks toward further development.

In addition to its main site in Lafayette, Flatirons owns a church in Golden and leases the Paramount Theater in Denver for services.

Though Burgen did not reveal the planned development's exact location, he suggested it would be "somewhere along I-25 between here and Longmont," in anticipation of the church's future growth.

"In an attempt to be salt and light in the community that God has entrusted to us here in Colorado, Flatirons Community Church is going to build another campus," Burgen said to an audience.

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The development, which will serve a variety of purposes for the church, will eventually act as housing for Flatirons' future schools, according to Burgen.

With the development comes insight into how extensive the church plans to structure its future school system.

"The new campus will be constructed in such a way as to also house our future school," he said. "Up to and eventually we are going to expand into middle school and high school, gymnasiums and sports fields and everything that goes along with it."

The move to further expand the campus comes as the church continues to attract larger crowds to its services, a situation it has found itself in as it grew out of obscurity.

"Thirty thousand homes, four or five people per house, 150,000 people are moving in within 10 miles of this building and they won't fit," Burgen said.

Before the church settled in its current location, a 162,000-square-foot campus at 355 W. South Boulder Road, it shuffled throughout the city in search of larger space to house its growing members.

"We are at over 85 percent full capacity, especially here at the Lafayette campus," he said. "Most people say once you hit 80 percent it just gets hard to come to church. We talked to architects and the city about how to make this building bigger or taller and get another 1,000 to 2,000 seats in here and we just can't.

"There's not enough parking, there's not enough land; we've already maxed out the parking and the streets. It's really hard to come to church here."

As plans for the new campus and school represent the most recent expansion efforts, residents in Lafayette have grown increasingly resentful toward the church for how it has continued to impact issues involving traffic, businesses, quality of life and, perhaps most importantly, tax base.

As residents continue to pushback against the ever-expanding reach of the church, recent weeks may offer a clearer understanding of Flatirons' future intentions.

"This church is bigger than the town I grew up in," Burgen said. "We are the light on the world and we are uniquely placed in this part of the world."

Representatives of Flatirons Church were unavailable for comment Monday.

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